Jane's Repository

The first of the four images we see here was sketched by Jane’s sister Cassandra in 1810. When Jane’s nephew James Edward Austen Leigh was writing her biography, he commissioned James Andrews of Maidenhead to create a “prettier” version of Cassandra’s sketch. This watercolor was then turned into an engraving and used as the frontispiece in his 1869 publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen. The image was re-engraved in 1873 for Evert A. Duyckink’s Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women of Europe and America. As Jane’s image was remediated from her sister’s sketch to watercolor paintings and engravings, each artist added his own flourish. In the the final image, Jane is inaccurately depicted wearing a wedding ring. One wonders whether the artist who added the wedding ring knew anything at all about the woman whose portrait he was asked to engrave; or, perhaps, he simply assumed that a single woman in possession of great wit must be in want of a ring.